On the Water

In September I’ll have been rowing for twenty years. Which is bonkers to think about. When did I start talking about the hobbies and activities I do in terms of decades?! Today, I guess. Yikes.

When I think about being a rower, it’s the thing that feels most emblematic of me as a person. Today I’m fairly competent at the Masters level and I’ve been a part of some great crews that won great titles. But when I first started as a walk-on my freshman year of college, I was terrible. Unbelievably terrible. “Talent” was never a word used in reference to my athletic abilities growing up, and absolutely nothing about the rowing motion came naturally to me. I was always nervous and tense in the boat. I never leaned into my rigger. I constantly missed water. I routinely got out of rhythm with my crew after a handful of strokes. When I got into a lineup, the boat felt bad. Everybody knew it was me. I knew it was me.  

But I was so desperate to be a part of that team. Radcliffe Crew was the most mind-blowing group of women I’d ever been around. They were strong and fierce and loud and hilarious. They lifted huge weights and had epic frosting eating contests and pulled erg pieces until they couldn’t stand up or keep their lunches down. They were relentless competitors. They were good to each other. They were good to me. Michelle Guerrette everyone knew would become a rowing legend; Caryn already was one. They told me I was doing fine, it’s gonna take some time, keep at it and don’t quit. Sarah Psutka was a year ahead of me, the smallest woman on the team, and pulled erg scores that matched people a foot taller and fifty pounds heavier. Winter of my sophomore year she came down after her morning workout with the varsity to pull a 5K on the erg next to me, talking me through and then shouting me through the piece until I hit the time standard to qualify for the team’s Florida training trip. It took time. Four years’ worth of time. But I kept at it. I didn’t quit. And senior year I stroked my 4+ to a medal at Sprints. My dad and sister came down to New Jersey to watch me. Coming off the water with a medal around my neck and seeing them there was, at that point, the best I’d ever felt in my life.

Those four years and the almost-sixteen that followed made me believe in that trite parental encouragement that shaped our notoriously ambitious (and yup, sometimes entitled) generation: we can be anything. We can do anything. You don’t need natural ability or god-given talent. You just need grit. Put your head down, grind as hard as you can, do.not.quit – and you’ll find a way to make it happen. I don’t think the sport made me who I am. I think it made me realize who I’d always been. And who I could always choose to be. Rowing was the most important thing that had ever happened to me.

Before coming out to Seattle I hadn’t rowed in three and a half months. For context, the next-longest break I’d taken in twenty years was two weeks off. I’d just moved to Brooklyn and thought I’d be okay doing other workouts while I focused on my career in New York. The third weekend after moving – and nearly every weekend after that – I was on an Acela back up to Boston so I could get in my single. And for those two days each week, when I was in my little boat, I felt like me.

Last year, like a lot of other things, my rowing became about him. We almost always stayed down in Hingham, and even at 5am the commute into the city was brutal. I started launching my boat more than an hour later than was typical for me, cut most workouts short, and still barely squeaked into work on time. He shouted the name of my boat whenever we passed each other on the river, loudly enough for everyone around us to hear. That started to be the moment of the morning I looked forward to most. The minute I shoved off the dock I started watching for him. We did pieces together. We raced together. We were safe there together. No teenager or ex-wife was showing up unannounced; no older daughter was Facetiming with her babies as he angled his phone to keep me out of frame. Rowing was a space where we could be together. And this wonderful thing that used to be mine became ours.

Here’s the thing about going through a breakup when your friends are rowers: they all immediately, valiantly try to get you on the water again. 5am the morning after he left, my phone buzzed with a text from my friend Alastair: I know you haven’t slept but we’re taking out a double. Get down here. [middle finger emoji]. It made me smile, which was a miracle in itself. But there was no chance. The river and the bridges and the rickety boathouse at the edge of the basin were all covered with the thick residue of memories. I couldn’t make myself go near them. My girlfriends invited me to morning erg sessions and stadiums and IHOP breakfasts, pre-workout optional. But I didn’t want any part of it. This sport had made me feel so tough and brave and fierce – and fucking indestructible – for more than half my life. Now just thinking about it made me feel like I would shatter.

“Rowing” was one of the answers I gave everybody when they asked, “Why Seattle?” The truth is I had no idea whether I’d want to row out here or not. But, in classic form, my east coast rowing buddies reached out to their west coast rowing buddies, and I landed at SeaTac with five Facebook messages from perfect strangers inviting me to row with them when I got into town. For the first week I didn’t do anything about them. Then last week I said yes.   

In the past six days I’ve been down to the boathouse four times. College Club is a gorgeous boathouse inside and out, a ten-minute walk from my place, perched just above a glassy stretch of Lake Union. My first row was in a quad with three older guys – much older guys – who are just learning to scull. They apologized profusely for their bad technique that left me rowing half slide and absolutely drenched by the end of practice – but I laughed and told them I’d had a great time. “You’re just starting, keep at it, we’ve all been there, it was a blast rowing with you.” And I meant it.

Two days later I was walking down to College Club in the middle of a dead-flat afternoon (the perks of working east coast hours) and I had a feeling so intense that it made me a little shaky as I got near the boathouse. I couldn’t wait to get on the water. I absolutely could not wait. I walked into the boat bay, took down a pair of oars, and opened the middle bay doors. Every move I made echoed in the concrete space – I was the only one there. I took a beat-up club single down from the rack, put it in slings, adjusted the feet to fit my height. Then I carried my little boat down to the dock, locked the oars in, and shoved off.

Almost immediately two powerboats went by and waked the shit out of me.

But the majority of the row was spectacular. After a couple of bobbled strokes my feel for the water came back. I felt long and relaxed. I paddled into a couple of the cuts, figured out where it gets shallow near Gas Works Park, snaked my way through neighborhoods of houseboats. As I spun to head home I got my point on the Space Needle – which was frigging awesome. And for an hour and a half, it felt like exactly what it was: just rowing. Under bridges that are just bridges. On water that’s just water. For an hour and a half, rowing felt like mine. And I felt like me. It’s the best feeling I’ve had in a long time.